| Cultural Relativism from David Eller's So Many Ways to be Human Cultural relativism is a much maligned and much misunderstood concept�even by many cultural relativists. In its simplest form, it merely acknowledges that cultures are different. That is what we see when we look out at the human world. There are so many ways to be human. More explicitly, cultures are different in how they see, interpret, value, and respond to the world. What is done in one culture may not be done in another. What is important or valuable in one culture may not be in another. What is good or right in one culture may not be in another. For example, in mainstream American culture, polygamy is deemed to be bad, immoral, illegal (there are of course minority sections of America that practice and value polygamy, such as some Mormons, but that just goes to show that cultural relativism is closer to home than we think!). However, in many cultures�in fact, as we will see in Chapter 8, in most cultures�polygamy is not only acceptable but normal or even preferred. Who is right about this institution? Actually, that is not the correct question to ask. In fact, as I will argue shortly, it is not even a possible question to ask. But let us say this for now: different cultures can and do have different notions of what is good, normal, moral, valuable, legal, etc. What do we do with or about this, if we want to understand another society? If we go to the Tiv, for example, where Bohannon did her fieldwork, or to Australia, where I did mine, we will find men with multiple wives. Our tendency might be to judge them with the values and norms we know: �Those men, they are all immoral criminal polygamists!� We might want to call the authorities and help the women �escape� their �abuse.� We might, then, be surprised when the authorities ask us why we are bothering them and the women tell us they are quite content, thank you. That might be hard to accept, but imagine this: a Tiv family comes to America and they see you involved in a monogamous marriage. What would they think? They might think your family is too poor for a second wife, or that the husband is a bad and undesirable man who cannot find a second wife, or that your family is just �deviant� from the ideal of polygamy. They might try to find you an additional spouse! Notice that (1) they got you wrong and (2) you got them wrong. What have we learned? Not very much, at least not very much about them. We learned about ourselves that we don�t like polygamy, but we already knew that. What if, though, our goal is to learn about them? Clearly, understanding�let alone judging�them by our standards is not very helpful. We might call them bad or immoral or criminal, but that does not explain why they do what they do�and they could just as easily say the same thing about us from their point of view. Do you see the mistake here? If we want to understand the behavior of members of another culture, we cannot apply our norms and morals and values and meanings to them, because they do not use ours. They use their own. That would be like trying to apply to rules of chess to a poker game. Not that the rules of chess are bad, or good. They just don�t pertain at all. If we want to understand another culture�and anthropologists do, although not everyone does�then we must obviously do something different: we must understand or judge them in terms of their own notions of good, normal, moral, valuable, meaningful, etc. That is cultural relativism. Cultural relativism asserts that we cannot apply standards from one culture to another culture. Rather, a behavior in a culture must be understood and evaluated in relation to, relative to, that culture. Why? First, because it is always tempting and easy to say �different is bad.� They do not do it my way, so they are wrong. We must avoid this arrogance and shortsightedness. Second, because we are quite likely to get it wrong. If we bring our cultural outlook to a cross-cultural situation, we may misunderstand the whole situation. This happens, for instance, in international business. A meeting of American and foreign businessmen, for instance, might end with each side thinking it understands what happened in the meeting. Later, one side does not respond as the other expected they would, and there is hurt feeling, anger, even real financial loss. What went wrong? Each side experienced the meeting from its own cultural point of view, not realizing that the other side had a different point of view�until it was too late. Accordingly, any judgment about norms, morals, values, meanings, and so on is a cultural judgment, made in relation to some standard of norms, morals, values, and meanings. Sticking out one�s tongue is an insult here, a greeting there. If I get mad or offended when they stick their tongue out at me, they might be quite surprised and confused by my response. This experience is called culture shock�the surprise, confusion, and actual pain that one feels in the presence of the unfamiliar. This is probably the most common experience in the world. So is the response: to judge people from other cultures by the standards of your own. This is called ethnocentrism (from ethno- for a way of life or culture and �centrism for putting it in the center or pride of place)�the attitude or practice of assuming that your own cultural point of view is the best one or even the only one and using it to interpret or judge others. Of course, ethnocentrism is possible�it is the easy, even the automatic, thing�but it is problematic for the reasons we have just seen. You can be ethnocentric from your side, but they can be ethnocentric from their side, and what is accomplished by that? Every judgment, then, of good/bad, moral/immoral, normal/abnormal, valuable/valueless, etc. is made from some cultural point of view�in relation to some standard of good, moral, normal, valuable. And each culture is precisely a set of standards for such things. Cultural relativism says that we need to take that into account when we confront and interact with other cultures, and that is true. There are people�both relativists and non-relativists�who think that cultural relativism means other things too that it does not. Namely, cultural relativism does not mean that: 1. �anything goes� or judgment is impossible or that there is no such thing as morality or value. Some critics of relativism insist that it means, or leads to, a position of no standards at all, a �do what you want to do,� �if it feels good, do it� ethic or anti-ethic. That is not what cultural relativism teaches us. It does not say, �Anything goes� but rather �Here, this goes, and there, that goes.� It is descriptive. It does not tell us what moral or value judgments to make, only that diverging moral or value judgments are being made. And it certainly does not conclude that value judgments are impossible. Rather, it is a description of exactly how they are made. All judgments are made in relation to some standard of judgment, and we should find out what that standard of judgment is. But there is no such thing as a �standardless� judgment, and there does not appear to be a single standard that all cultures share. Instead, there are multiple standards. Each culture is a standard of judgment. In fact, what cultural relativism says is not that there is no morality or value but there are lots of moralities or values--many different moral codes and value systems that different societies follow. We cannot assume that they follow ours. We need to research and find out what theirs are. 2. anything a culture does is good/moral/valuable/normal, etc. Some critics of relativism claim that taking a relativistic stance toward another culture is essentially condoning it. But what does it mean to condone? It means to judge favorably. And relativism is not, we repeat, about judging but about understanding. The classic objection to cultural relativism is that it ends up accepting or excusing Nazi atrocities. Far from it. Cultural relativism would not lead us to say, �Nazi attitudes and behaviors are good or acceptable.� What it would lead us to say is, �Here is where those attitudes and behaviors came from, and here is what they meant to them.� We certainly do not have to say that we approve for us to say that we understand. In fact, not only do we not have to, but we cannot �condone� this or any other behavior, because condoning,, like condemning, is a value response. To say a behavior is good or bad is to judge, and that means judging against some particular value standard. That means exiting your cultural relativism and resuming participation in your community of values, your culture. As an anthropologist I can understand a behavior without judging�in fact, I can only understand without judging�but as a member of American culture I can say that I do not share or condone that behavior. But I must always remember that my judgment is a product of my American culture and would not be shared by all cultures. 3. anything a culture believes is true. Some critics of relativism assert that relativism compels us to accept as valid any belief or �knowledge� that a culture possesses. Honestly, some relativists assert this too. If, for instance, a culture believes that the earth is flat, then it is flat for them, even while it is round for us. This is of course nonsense and has nothing to do with relativism at all. Let us prove this by contrasting two different kinds of statements: Polygamy is good. Earth is round. These statements look superficially identical. Both take the form of noun-�is�-adjective. But the similarity ends there. What kind of statement is the latter? It is a fact-statement, or a fact-claim. Is it true or false? Well, let�s assume that we do not know yet. Someone else advances the fact-claim that the earth is flat. How do we settle the issue? We look at the earth. We make observations and measurements, that is, we appeal to nature or reality. We find that the earth really is round, not flat, and verify the initial statement. How about the former example? Is it true or false that polygamy is good? The answer is�neither. Or both. It depends. It�s relative. That is, in Tivland or in Aboriginal Australia or in fundamentalist Mormonism, polygamy is good. In mainstream American society, polygamy is bad. So reality makes it possible for the statement and its opposite to be �true� at the same time. But reality does not allow the earth to be round and flat at the same time. This is because �polygamy is good� is not the same kind of statement as �earth is round.� Again, the latter is a fact-claim (either true or false), but the former is a value-claim (neither true nor false). Value claims are judgments and therefore must be made by reference to, relative to, some value standard. Shall we use mainstream American standards, or Tiv standards, or Aboriginal standards, ad infinitum? The answer is that any of those standards will do equally well. This is where many ethical philosophers and others fail to see the point: a value statement like �polygamy is good� is not, cannot be, true or false because it is not even a complete statement yet. Before we can evaluate the statement, we need to know more: good for what, good according to whom? If you say, �Polygamy is good among the Tiv,� I can respond, �That is true.� If you say, �Polygamy is good,� my response is not �True� or �False� but �Go on, finish your statement.� I do not know yet which cultural value-standard you are applying, so the statement is unfinished, useless, as formulated. Since there are multiple possible value standards that can be brought to bear on the claim, then the final judgment will be relative to whichever standard we ultimately use. In other words, value statements like this one are culturally relative, whereas fact statements are not. Or, it might be said that fact statements are �relative��but they are relative to a single standard (Reality) that is objective and universally shared. Or the acceleration of gravity on earth (32 feet per second per second) is the same for all people in all cultures because they share a single common standard for measuring that quantity. If all people in all cultures shared a single common standard for evaluating polygamy, then they would all come to the same evaluation, but then there would not be many different cultures for it to be relative to. Therefore, we can conclude as follows: Value statement Fact statement Neither true nor false Either true or false Culturally relative Not culturally relative Many possible standards (cultures) Single possible standard (reality) 4. cultural relativism is self-contradictory, because if everything is relative, then cultural relativism is relative too, which means we do not know if it is relative or not. This criticism is flawed, and perhaps you can now see why. First of all, it does not say that "everything is relative." Some things are, and some things are not. Facts are not, but values and norms and meanings are. Cultural relativism, as we have tried to show, is an awareness and acknowledgment of cultural difference. It amounts to saying, �Different cultures have different notions of good/normal/moral/valuable.� It amounts to saying, �Each culture is a possible standard for evaluating behavior.� Now, what kind of statement is that: value or fact? It is a fact statement. It is not saying culture is good, or cultural relativism is good, or multiple value standards are good. Perhaps from certain viewpoints, multiple values standards�multiple cultures�are not good at all. They definitely make the human world more complicated and contentious. Still, culture is; multiple value standards exist. That is a fact. If �different cultures exist� or �different cultures have different values� is a fact statement, or at least a fact claim, then it is not relative�it is either true or false. I think we can show with sufficient certainty that it is true. Go to Borneo and see the human heads hanging in the Iban houses, and then look for heads in a typical American home! So cultural relativism�or better yet, the reason for cultural relativism�is as true as the roundness of the earth. If someone were to push and ask, �Then is cultural relativism good?� the answer would have to be �Depends.� It is good for understanding and tolerating other cultures, it is good for trying to conduct economic or political relations between them. It is not so good for condemning or converting them. It is relative to your values and your goals. |
| See also www.culturalrelativism.us |